Montana Kaimin / November 10, 1999 / page 3

Sculptures bring the forest to UC

By Tom Greene

   Shhh.  If you have to talk when you enter, whisper.

   Smell the cedar.  If you have to touch, touch gingerly.  The wood-carved sculptures exhibited at the gallery on the second floor of the UC until this Friday were placed to remind visitors of the woods and, if they enter humbly, the exhibit will do just that.

   The sculptures are the work of UM grad student Roger Wing, who said he wanted to put the pieces together in such a way as to “bring the forest into the gallery.”

   But the carvings are more than that.  Each piece has its own story and the roots of each burrow deep, growing into a larger story.

   Eight years ago Roger Wing’s mother discovered that she had breast cancer.  Pieces like Wing’s “Good Grief” reflect the grieving process that Wing went through.  It is a life-sized, self-portrait sculpture of Wing sitting cross-legged on the floor.

   “But it (“Good Grief”) was too personal to leave alone,” Wing said.  “I wanted a self-portrait that was universal.  So that I wasn’t just feeling sorry for myself.

  “The tree in front of me is basically saying ‘Get over it.  Look at me, at my record.  I was 200-years-old.  I was here when the white-man’s history was just getting started around here,” Wing said.

   But other pieces are more human, like his piece “Fuck All,” a giant wooden arm rising up to give the finger.  This piece is much more confrontational than any of his others, Wing said, which can be harder for people to get past.  He said it represents something nameless he can’t blame.  It is an anger for illness and suffering he felt until “I couldn’t keep denying it.  It was time to tackle it.”

   When he was gathering the pieces together for the gallery, the “Fuck-All” piece drew the attention and several frowns from the faculty.  Still wondering what to do about the piece, Wing was looking through the drawers in his studio when he found an old note from a fellow graduate art student.  The note was from Scott Bardsley, who was killed two months ago in a double homicide.

   “The note read, ’Keep the finger,’” Wing said.  “It said that whenever people tell you they know what art is, you know they don’t know what they are talking about.  Scott was hip like that, he had this beautiful attitude.  He did what being an artist is.”

   The piece stayed and Wing defended his entire collection in front of a panel of art experts standing next to a giant hand giving the bird.

   Roger Wing’s mother had made plans to come to Montana, but got too sick to travel.  She died the day before the exhibit opened.  It was almost, Wing said, “like she waited until everything was in place.”

   The pieces in the gallery are gnarled and unpolished.  Wing said to attempt a higher degree of perfection would leave them lifeless.  His hand-forged tools leave decisive marks on the wood.  Nails sometimes poke out of rough edges.

   “That way everything isn’t resolved neatly.”  Wing said “It gives it more vitality, more life.  It is an open-ended search, rather than just a completion.”